Rent a sophisticated hacking toolkit for $10,000 per month

If you aren’t satisfied with your Low Orbit Ion Cannon and realize it isn’t getting you anywhere in the esteemed hacker circles you fancy yourself a member of, you can rent your very own sophisticated hacking kit for $10,000 per month. Equipped with the kit you’ll be free to show the world that you are as 1337 (and overflowing with cash) as they come.

You may have heard of the Blackhole exploit kit, a hacking package that people can license from its supposed authors, Russian hackers Paunch and HodLuM. The customer has various options from which to choose, then the kit is deployed to locations that web pages or links in spam emails generally lead to. Once an unsuspecting victim triggers the Blackhole exploit, JavaScript analyzes the victim’s computer, and then loads all of the exploits that can penetrate the victim’s system. The Blackhole exploit also relays which exploits worked on the victim’s computer back to the perpetrator.

Though the Blackhole exploit kit was already very dangerous, Paunch has been purchasing more exploits from other hackers and security researchers and including them in a new version of the kit, known as Cool. Whereas the original Blackhole ran customers around $1500 per year, the new kit is priced considerably more at $10,000 per month.

The first instance of the kit was spotted back in October of 2012, and was seen serving ransomware, the kind of malware that demands you pay a fee to remove it. Paunch admitted to security expert Brian Krebs that he created the Cool exploit kit and revealed the hefty price, which Krebs then confirmed by way of discussing it with “members of a very exclusive underground forum.”

Though that ten grand price tag might seem extremely expensive — even for an internet criminal mastermind — Symantec has discovered that one ransomware gang has been able to generate $30,000 per day, which is obviously more than enough to pay for the Cool exploit (plus, I’m guessing, provide a pretty good dental plan for the gang members).

Considering you most likely want to avoid your computer and sensitive information being compromised, just remember not to click on mysterious links, have a decent firewall and antivirus, avoid some of the seedier scenes on the internet, and don’t make a ton of e-enemies, because you never know what they’re capable of doing.